Bird flu was found in a 4-year-old Beijing boy who has no symptoms of the infection, health authorities said, suggesting more people may be catching the H7N9 influenza virus than reported.

The first asymptomatic H7N9 case was discovered by health care workers searching for possible cases, the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said in a statement on its website today. The boy’s parents are poultry and fish sellers, and their neighbors across the street had bought chicken sold by the family of a 7- year-old girl whose H7N9 infection was reported two days ago.

The boy, who is under medical observation, suggests that some H7N9 infections may be going unrecorded because of a lack of obvious symptoms. Almost all the 60 previous cases in eastern China were extremely unwell, with complications extending to brain damage, multi organ failure and muscle breakdown.

“With asymptomatic cases around, I think everything changes,” said Ian Mackay, an associate professor of clinical virology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, in a telephone interview today. “There has been a spike in pneumonia cases that have drawn the health officials’ attention, but the virus may have been going around as a normal cold.”

Over the past five years, Nevada's primary state psychiatric hospital has put hundreds of mentally ill patients on Greyhound buses and sent them to cities and towns across America.

Since July 2008, Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas has transported more than 1,500 patients to other cities via Greyhound bus, sending at least one person to every state in the continental United States, according to a Bee review of bus receipts kept by Nevada's mental health division.

About a third of those patients were dispatched to California, including more than 200 to Los Angeles County, about 70 to San Diego County and 19 to the city of Sacramento.

The political establishment has dismissed Germany's new anti-euro party as a fear-mongering populist aberration that could implode even before a looming federal election.

But the first congress of the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) showed that the movement, launched only a few months ago by a group of renegade academics, journalists and businessmen, is striking a chord with voters and may prove an influential force come September.

Over 1,500 AfD supporters from across Germany packed into the Intercontinental Hotel in central Berlin on Sunday to elect the party leadership and formally approve a policy program that has one objective above all: an end to the euro and return of the deutsche mark.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said Sunday that foreigners with bank deposits in Cyprus who lost at least three million euros ($3.9 million) under the recent EU bailout for the island would be given passports. The move will likely affect Russian depositors most.

"Non-resident investors who held deposits prior" to the bailout and lost "at least three million euros will be eligible to apply for Cypriot citizenship," he told a Russian business conference in the coastal resort of Limassol.

"We believe that a number of measures to be adopted could on the one hand mitigate to some extent the damage the Russian business community has endured," Anastasiades said.

Taipei, April 14 (CNA) Specimens from a 4-year-old Chinese tourist who developed a fever in the eastern county of Hualien were delivered for testing for H7N9 avian influenza Sunday, health officials said that day. Chung Mei-chu, a secretary in the county's Health Bureau, said the child, who arrived in Taiwan April 12 with his parents as independent tourists, was taken to the Mennonite Christian Hospital's emergency room after developing a fever.

Margaret Thatcher's funeral this week may be the costliest political advert in history, if critics are to be believed - but her death is reminding Conservatives that their current prime minister pales against her ideological conviction and power.

Pollsters say David Cameron may get a small lift in the polls from public nostalgia for such a historic figure, even as figures on the right of his party pine openly for a leader who would have scorned his consensual quest for the centre ground.

"She believed in the battle of ideas — something that we would welcome returning to domestic politics today," Conor Burns, a Conservative lawmaker and friend of Thatcher's, told a parliamentary debate on her legacy last Wednesday.

Burns recounted how a taxi driver had told him there hadn't been a good premier since Thatcher, an assessment he said Thatcher shared. Cameron laughed, but it was an awkward moment for him.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has not been seen in public for the past two weeks sparking widespread speculation amid escalating tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

Unconfirmed reports which suggested a coup against the leader have been rubbished by experts in Seoul citing no unusual military movement in the country.

Alongside a flurry of threats from North Korea, Kim's absence has set rumour mills rolling. One question being asked is whether Pyongyang has been forced to tone down its war rhetoric against the US and South Korea.

Kim was last seen in public on 1 April when he headed a parliamentary session. The leader has been missing in action for the last 15 days at a time when the country is set to mark the birth anniversary of his grandfather and former leader of North Korea Kim Il-sung.

It is widely speculated that North Korea will launch a ballistic missile to mark the occasion.

Austrian Foreign Minister Maria Fekter has declared a victory in her lonely battle with the other 26 European Union countries to maintain her country's banking secrecy and avoid reporting foreigners' accounts to their tax authorities.

Dismissing suggestions that her position had left Austria under pressure and isolated, the woman who has vowed to "fight like a lion" to defend the country's banking rules insisted she had emerged on top in weekend talks with EU partners.

"I can even report a success," she told the Oesterreich paper, because her counter-call to shed more light on opaque offshore trusts elsewhere was now part of an initiative by big EU countries to crack down on cross-border tax cheats.

It was a typically self-assured performance by Fekter, who described herself once as "the only man in the Austrian government".

Two people in the central Chinese province of Henan have been infected by a new strain of avian influenza, the first cases found in the region, while the death toll has risen to 13 from a total of 60 infections after two more deaths in Shanghai.

One of the Henan victims, a 34-year old man in the city of Kaifeng, is now critically ill in hospital, while the other, a 65-year old farmer from Zhoukou, is stable. The two cases do not appear to be connected.

A total of 19 people in close contact with the two new victims were under observation but had shown no signs of infection, state news agency Xinhua said.

The government continues to claim there is nothing to worry about, 13 deaths reported in the past 2 weeks may not seem that alarming, considering the common flu could do worse, however...We are looking at a new strain, source is not determined and it is spreading and mutating fast.Lets look at the the H5N1 virus just for a moment, this strain has killed 371 people globally since first discovered in humans in 2003, with a mortality rate from 50% - 90% of those who have become infected.China alone has seen 45 infected which resulted in the deaths of 30 of the 45 people in the past TEN YEARS!!!H7N9 is now at 60 Infected, 13 Deaths reported in the PAST TWO WEEKS, do the maths....Just one final fact, report 2 days ago informed us that a 4 year old was the first person to recover from H79N, so the remaining are either still dying or the recovery isn't being reported.

Japan and the United States cannot allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishia said on Sunday after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry is in Japan for the last stop on an Asian tour aimed at solidifying support for curbing North Korea's nuclear program. Pyongyang has threatened for weeks to attack the United States, South Korea and Japan since new U.N. sanctions were imposed in response to its latest nuclear arms test in February, fuelling speculation of a new missile launch or nuclear test.

North Korea has rejected the South's call to negotiate to resolve the nuclear crisis, calling it a "crafty trick".

The development came as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Japan for the last leg of his four-day Asia tour aimed at reining in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

South Korea last week urged the North to discuss stalled operations at a joint factory complex and other issues.

But an unidentified spokesman at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said on Sunday that Pyongyang had no intention of talking with Seoul unless it abandoned its confrontational posture.

SINCE - what is now widely acknowledged - Cyprus’ botched bailout, a debate has been raging on over whether the island should stay in the eurozone or go back to its former national currency, the pound.

Naturally there are two schools of thought on the issue: those arguing that since the conditions of the bailout have all but destroyed the economy, Cyprus should abandon the common currency and the tough terms imposed by its lenders, and those who say the consequences of a so-called Cypexit would be much worse than the alternative.

It does appear however that there are also those who support a Cypexit because of the profits they stand to make.

The European Union’s economic growth strategy has been a failure so far and unless bold steps are taken the economy will continue to stagnate, a study commissioned by EU finance ministers said.

The paper by Brussels-based Bruegel think-tank scholars Zsolt Darvas, Jean Pisani-Ferry and Guntram Wolff was the basis of discussions on the future of growth in Europe among the 27 EU finance ministers this week at informal talks in Dublin.

“This combination contributes to an overall weakening of economic growth and threatens to turn into self-perpetuating stagnation. This dark picture calls for bold policy action significantly beyond what is currently being undertaken,” it said.

The paper said that while 30 years ago, the output of the countries that formed the European Union until its 2004 expansion was 15% higher than that of the US, it is likely to be 17% lower in 2017.

Angered by the British media’s coverage of Brussels, the European Commission says it wants to be a “moral compass” against press misconduct, seeking new national and Europe-wide regulatory powers over journalists.

The EU has spent £2.3 million on the previously unpublicised “Mediadem” project to “reclaim a free and independent media”. In a “policy brief” co-authored by its lead British researcher, Rachael Craufurd Smith, Mediadem says it is “simplistic” to “see state influence [over the press] as inherently stifling”.

Dr Craufurd Smith, an Edinburgh University academic, said that it was also “simplistic” to believe that “market-driven media” were now “free and independent”.

Cyprus's central bank governor said on Sunday he was willing to work with the government to pull the island out of its economic crisis, provided the bank's independence was respected.

A rift between Governor Panicos Demetriades, appointed last May by the communist former administration, and the ruling center-right government has deepened in recent days and pressure has grown on him to resign over his handling of the crisis.

In the past week, the Cypriot parliament started an investigation against Demetriades, President Nicos Anastasiades's government withdrew the appointment of his deputy, and three central bank officials resigned.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service confirm that animals have died after a "fierce fire" broke out at a zoo.

The blaze, which has now been brought under control, occurred overnight in the tropical house of the Five Sisters Zoo at Polbeth, West Calder, West Lothian.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: "Firefighters have controlled the fire ... resources have been scaled back to two fire appliances and crews remain on site dealing with small pockets of fire and assisting zoo and vet staff.

"Firefighters were able to help them rescue two dwarf crocodiles and an otter but sadly some animals have perished in the fierce fire.

A promised path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally may leave out hundreds of thousands of them.

Bipartisan Senate legislation would make legalization and ultimately citizenship available only to those who arrived in the U.S. before Dec. 31, 2011, according to a Senate aide with knowledge of the proposals.

A former justice of the peace is reportedly set to be charged with three murders, including a former Texas district attorney and assistant DA, after he was arrested on Saturday.

Eric Williams, 46, has been arrested by authorities investigating the murders of District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, last month and the fatal shooting of assistant DA Mark Hasse in late January.

Williams was booked into Kaufman County Jail early Saturday morning for making terroristic threats and 'insufficient bond.' He is being held on a $3 million bond.

Sources tell CBS that he will be charged with capital murder in the deaths of the DA, his wife and assistant attorney.

Justice secretary Chris Grayling has banned prisoners from watching 18-rated DVDs as part of his plan to turn jails into ‘no-frills’ institutions.

Violent and sexually explicit movies will be removed from prison libraries and inmates will no longer be able to receive them from visitors. Any such material found in cells will in future be confiscated.

Computer and video games for over-18s were banned in prisons several months ago and now the Government has widened the net.

While Washington politicians battle over new gun-control measures, state legislators have already passed dozens of new firearms laws since the Newtown school massacre ignited a national debate in December.

The new state laws, a small fraction of the 1,500 or so gun-related bills that have been proposed at state level, reflect the vast political and ideological differences in the debate over gun rights - a gulf that helps explain why lawmakers in Washington find it so difficult to reach a consensus on the issue.

President Barack Obama wants NASA to start work on finding a small asteroid that could be shifted into an orbit near the moon and used by astronauts as a stepping-stone for an eventual mission to Mars, agency officials said on Wednesday.

The project, which envisions that astronauts could visit such an asteroid as early as 2021, is included in Obama's $17.7 billion spending plan for the U.S. space agency for the 2014 fiscal year.

It is intended as an expansion of existing initiatives to find asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth, and preparations for a human expedition to Mars in the 2030s.

Two people in the central Chinese province of Henan have been infected by a new strain of avian influenza, the first cases found in the region and bringing the total number nationwide to 51, Xinhua state news agency said on Sunday.

One of the victims, a 34-year old man in the city of Kaifeng, is now critically ill in hospital, while the other, a 65-year old farmer from Zhoukou, is stable. The two cases do not appear to be connected.

Three cases have now been reported outside the original clusters in eastern China, including one in the capital Beijing, but there is nothing out of the ordinary so far, the China representative of the World Health Organization said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Japan on Sunday, the last stop on an Asian tour aimed at solidifying support for curbing North Korea's nuclear program and reassuring U.S. allies after weeks of threats of war from Pyongyang.

The North has threatened for weeks to attack the United States and South Korea since new U.N. sanctions were imposed in response to its latest nuclear arms test in February. Speculation has mounted of a new missile launch or nuclear test.

"We must make them (North Korea) recognize that their provocative actions will not benefit them at all," Kyodo news agency quoted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as saying during a tour on Sunday of Iwo Jima, the site of a major battle towards the end of World War Two.

Bankers are confident they can persuade the European Union that its proposed financial trading tax poses enough risks to struggling economies and banks to warrant being watered down.

Their campaign against the tax, which will be imposed by 11 of the EU's 27 countries, focuses on how much it would boost the cost of funding for governments and companies, erode returns earned even by long-term investors, and hurt funding markets which are crucial to the health of the financial system.

China and the United States will set up a working group on cyber-security, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday, as the two sides moved to ease months of tensions and mutual accusations of hacking and Internet theft.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing during a visit to China, Kerry said the United States and China had agreed on the need to speed up action on cyber security, an area that Washington says is its top national security concern.

I didn’t much like my country last week because I saw a side to it that was ugly and coarse and cruel.

Maggie Thatcher wasn’t even cold before the tsunami of hatred crashed through the plaudits like a poison riptide. “The Witch is dead”, “Rot in Hell”, “Rejoice, Thatcher is dead” said the vile banners, even though many of those brandishing them weren’t even alive when Thatcher was in power.

And how ironic that the people screaming she’d wrecked the country and wrecked their lives still had enough money to buy champagne to drink to her death, to shout that they hoped it was a painful and degrading one.

Still, they followed the mob, sheep-like, shouting that someone had told them she was a bitch... and so they were glad she was dead.

Washington risked further inflaming relations with Moscow on Friday by targeting 18 Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses and threatening them with financial sanctions and visa bans.

The names, released by the Treasury, follow the passage of a controversial bill through Congress requiring the US to take retribution against Russians alleged to have been involved in covering up corruption and organised crime.

Known as the Magnitsky Act, after the Russian lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian officials of stealing $230m in tax rebates. In prison, Magnitsky was repeatedly beaten and denied medical treatment. He died in 2009 of untreated pancreatitis.

For long periods we forget it, even though it is a human rights disgrace surely unequalled in recent American history. But now, 11 years after it opened, the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay is demanding our attention once again, thanks to the largest hunger strike by detainees in its infamous history. Al-Qa'ida has been decimated; America's war in Iraq is over and the one in Afghanistan soon will be. But the scandal of Guantanamo endures.

Today, 166 inmates remain. Three have been convicted, while a further 30 will face trial. Fifty or so are in a legal no-man's-land, deemed by the authorities too dangerous to release but against whom there is not enough evidence to prosecute. And then there are 86 who have been cleared for release, but who instead rot in a hell from which there is no escape. No wonder yesterday more than 160 of them were involved in clashes with guards that led to what the US said were "less than lethal" rounds being fired.

In 2009, Barack Obama entered office vowing to close Guantanamo within a year. Perhaps he should have listened more closely to his predecessor. George W Bush, too, wanted to shut Guantanamo; even he came to understand it was perhaps the most powerful single recruiting agent for global terrorism. But, he warned presciently, the devil was in the detail – or, more exactly, in Congress.

The Popocatepetl volcano has spewed a dense cloud of ash over the central Mexico state of Puebla, with ash falling to the ground in several towns.

Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center says ash was blown about 400 yards (meters) into the air above the volcano, located east of Mexico City. Prevailing winds carried the material northeast, away from Mexico City.

The center said ash falls had been confirmed in Huejotzingo, near the city of Puebla, which is capital of the state of the same name.

High benzene levels in groundwater have been detected about 1,400 feet downstream of the presumed source of a hydrocarbons leak northwest of Parachute, the state Department of Natural Resources said Friday.

That’s the farthest such reported detection from the site, as the area of known contamination continues to grow.

A new monitoring well about 10 feet from the creek found benzene at 340 parts per billion, the state said. The drinking water standard for benzene is 5 ppb or less.

Guantanamo Bay prison guards have fired several rubber shots to quell prisoner unrest as they moved inmates into individual cells, US military officials said.

The violence erupted during an early morning raid carried out because, according to military officials, prisoners had covered up security cameras and windows as part of a protest and hunger strike over their indefinite confinement and conditions at the US base in Cuba.

Prisoners fought guards with makeshift weapons that included broomsticks and mop handles when troops arrived to move them, said Robert Durand, a military spokesman.

Guards responded by firing four "less-than-lethal rounds" in the section of the prison known as Camp Six, he said.